Although banks are attracted by the cost-efficiency and agility that the cloud brings in, the worries pertaining to the security (customized standards that banks are governed by) and the safety of storing sensitive information on the cloud hasn’t ceased. In fact while a few applications are ideal for cloud hosting, a few can still be kept away from it. Temenos, the leading software developer for financial institutions has set a trend of sorts by undertaking its first-ever cloud migration projects as it moves 12 Mexican financial institutions to the cloud-hosted TEMENOS 24 (T24) platform.

So what are the applications that can immediately be shifted to the cloud for favorable benefits? According to Information Week Financial Services Cloud Computing survey a vast majority of capital markets firms that are using cloud computing employ it in areas of general services, such as general business applications (28 percent); datacenter space (24 percent); and storage, archiving and disaster recovery (21 percent). Meanwhile, 41 percent of respondents currently are evaluating adopting the cloud for application testing. Bank applications such as pricing models are being called most suited for the cloud, while those that involve sensitive information are best avoided. If we had to list the top 5 application areas best suited for cloud computing, these would include:

Following are the top 5 cloud applications being most widely used at present.

Cloud as a Back-up: Because of security concerns with cloud servers, banks could keep a back-up of their important data to avoid any unexpected turn of unforeseen events.

Web servers, management tools, analytical and business software are moving to cloud computing. Cloud based web infrastructure and software will help banks save a lot of money.

Employee Productivity Applications: Applications such as these used for improving employee performance and better reporting in the bank is another popular area which can be hosted on the cloud.

The launch of several online banking applications on the cloud have piqued users interest and has generated a lot of positive buzz about banking applications on the Cloud. Applications such as Mint, Geezeo, Wesabe, Expenser, Moneystrands, Xero have attracted the young digital natives to what they’re terming as Banking 2.0. With users such as these, banks may be forced to hop on to the cloud to please these customers in order to retain their customer base. So the turnaround is probably just round the corner, where an overwhelming percentage of customers access the cloud for money management, and banks have no choice but to please them.

Author : Karan Kirpalani

Karan represents a new generation of Product Marketing Managers that can cover core product development & management activities as well as product marketing activities. To his customers & colleagues, he is the Go-to-guy for consultations.